Thursday, June 02, 2005

Amnesty International : S,êx Xeznewî was deadly tortured

The organisation for Human's rights, Amnesty International stated yesterday that S,êx Xeznewî, the Kurdish Syrian Ulema, had been tortured until death in a Syrian prison. S,êx Xeznewî died on May 30, 20 days after his "missing", wrote an Amnesty Statement from Beyrouth. He was detained by Syrian services, and the NGO tells that he is the sixth Kurd to die in prison because of torture or bad treatments, since 2004 March uprising. Neil Sammonds, the representative of Amnesty for Syria called Syria to open an independant investigation about the death and to judge the killers.

S,êx Xeznewî was Vice-president of the Islamic Sutidies Center in Damascus and was very popular, even out of Kurdish community. He was 46 years old, and endeavoured in his teaching to stress the compatibility of Islam and democracy. He was one of the spokesmen of Kurds in Syria, and the imam of Qamis,lo. He was firmly opposed to violence and has recently called Syrian authorities to reforms and dialogue between the different religious communities. In February and March he went in Norway, Brussels and Germany to establish relations between Eu and his community.

Nazir Mustafa; the General Secretary of Syrian KDP, told S,êx Xeznewî had been seen in a military hospital of Teshrin in Damascus, and, according to physicians, had physical marks of tortures.

He was buried in his town of Qamis,lo. Kurdish sources say that dozen of thousand people were present.

But Syrian government denies, and stated that the sheikh was rapted by a criminal gang (well, indeed, Syrian power IS a criminal gang).